Shigeru Miyamoto wishes he had designed Angry Birds

Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto has admitted he wishes he had designed Angry Birds, the hit gaming phenomenon now available on practically every non-Nintendo platform.

Nintendo's legendary developer revealed he enjoyed playing the game, praising its simple controls and "exciting" combination of game elements.

"Angry Birds is a very simple idea but it's one of those games that I immediately appreciated when I first started playing," Miyamoto told Hookshot, "before wishing that I had been the one to come up with the idea first."

"I mean, obviously I want to be the one creating the most convincing, surprising game ideas," he added.

"It takes a little while to get used to the controls, I think, but once you've mastered them, you have a lot of precision. To make the interface and controls work that well and intuitively... well, I think a lot of work went into getting that right."

Angry Birds has yet to appear on a Nintendo platform, despite the touch-screen controls of the DS and 3DS.

"Obviously, if the developer had created the game for Nintendo DS the controls would have been even better, but what can you do?" Miyamoto concluded.